Commenting on Benedict XVI’s visit to Brazil, Daniel Deckers describes the situation of the country as follows in the FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG (9/05): “The transformation of the subcontinent has barely begun. The Catholic Church is not immune from these changes. Already in the Fifties it lost the religious monopoly as a result of the spread of Christian groups and sects of North American provenance…. Myths and images of the Sixties and Seventies, together with the priority option for the poor and basic communities have always characterized the idea that Europe has formed of the Church of the New World. But these images do not correspond to the complex reality of a Church that it is beginning to grasp how little it is really incorporated in the subcontinent…. Pope Benedict and the fifth general assembly of the Council of Latin-American Bishops face a daunting task. Already Pope John Paul II had formulated it as follows: new evangelization. The evangelicals have successfully shown what needs to be done to Catholics, imprisoned in their clerical structures and dependent on foreign financial support. But the Catholic Church still represents three-quarters of Latin-Americans, and many still link their hopes for a dignified life to it”. The Polish daily DZIENNIK (9/05) publishes the opinion of a well-known historian, Pawel Machcewicz, commenting on the new dispute between the Polish and Russian authorities regarding the monuments that commemorate the soldiers of the Russian Army who died on Polish soil during the Second World War. Machcewicz emphasizes that “Poland in the post-war period found herself in a very different situation than did Estonia (formally annexed to the USSR and only sovereign since 1991) where a similar conflict has recently broken out”. “We (Poles) ought not to promote our war of memorials against Russia today. All the more so since this could lead to a conflict not only with the authorities of the Russian Federation, but also with millions of Russians for whom the memory of the dead during the war against Nazi Germany is still sacred, and constitutes the fundamental element of the patriotic tradition”. The historian maintains: “This does not mean we cannot discuss the future of these few war memorials” but this discussion “ought to take place in a peaceful way and at another time”. A few days before the twice-yearly summit between the EU and Russia (17 -18 May, at Samara, on the Volga), an editorial in the French daily LE MONDE (10/05) speculates on what will be the attitude of the new French President Nicolas Sarkozy. “Never since the fall of the Berlin Wall have the tensions” between Russia and the EU “been so strong”. What have precipitated an already critical situation are “the decision of Poland and the Czech Republic to deploy the American anti-missile shield on their territories” and “the recent conflict between Estonia and Russia following the removal of a Soviet war memorial from the centre of Tallinn to the outskirts, which has further poisoned relations” with Brussels. According to the editorialist, the Russian reaction has a hidden agenda: the fact that “it never really accepted” the EU accession “of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe” in 2004. “The European Union and Russia must negotiate the renewal of their strategic partnership” at a time when “the friends on whom Putin could count have left office one after another. Angela Merkel does not have for Putin the same admiration as did Gerhard Schroeder, and Nicolas Sarkozy has promised he will not follow, in terms of personal relations with the leader of the Kremlin, the example of Jacques Chirac. The German Chancellor and the new French President do not underestimate the influence of Russia in the world, but have decided not to let themselves be intimidated”. “On ethnic questions the majority of my colleagues in the European Parliament opt for a pragmatic approach or simply follow the party line. That’s how economic interests succeed in prevailing over the concept of human dignity”, said the Polish MEP Mirolsav Mikolasik in an interview with the Italian Catholic daily AVVENIRE (10/05). Mikolasik was expressing his opposition to the Directive on gene and cell therapies approved by the EP on 25 April. In spite of “the primarily Christian idea” that inspired Europe “and a document on common values approved last April… many MEPs are disinterested in ethics when it comes to voting on practical questions (such as the commercialisation of the human body or the modification of the genetic make-up of the human body for the production of drugs) that place in doubt the value of life and human dignity”. According to Mikolasik the “battle to restore ethics to Strasbourg” needs to be continued; citizens, for their part, “could play a very important role” by pressuring, for example, “their governments or their own representatives in Strasbourg to ask the organs of control of public health to provide proper labelling on prescription drugs specifying which of them use embryonic stem cells and to legislate to exclude such drugs from the market”.
